Tuesday, 8 March 2011 (From InDaily www.indaily.com.au)
OPINION: SUSAN MITCHELL
Adelaide manners matter
GENERALLY speaking, the good citizens of Adelaide are a pretty civilised bunch when it comes to public discourse. Apart from the occasional ratbag rave on commercial radio, we conduct our arguments in a polite, respectful manner.
The freedom to speak your mind is a touchstone of a democratic nation. The manner in which you undertake this verbal expression, however, is quite another issue. Our colony was based on people who believed in the value of good manners as a means of conducting human relationships, regardless of wealth or class background.
The larger eastern states, particularly New South Wales, like to sneer at Adelaide’s emphasis on civilised behaviour and way of speaking, which they believe comes from a sense of superiority because we never allowed convicts into our colony. But the time has come to remind them that their origins are also showing. The public behaviour and uncivilised manner of speaking of their leading commercial radio presenters and the Federal Leader of the Opposition is out of control.
NSW established a convict culture from its very beginnings. There was no room or time for manners or civilised discussion when many of the first “settlers” arrived with chains around their ankles.
What began as a convict culture is still essentially a convict culture, a “them and us” culture, a “means will always justify the end” culture, a “survival of the loudest” culture, a “strike the first blow” culture.
If you think I am being too harsh, just listen to commercial talk radio in Sydney. The highest-rating talk station is 2GB and its most successful announcer is Alan Jones. This is the man who thinks it is acceptable to berate the elected Prime Minister of Australia for being a little late for his program. Now, however much he hates Julia Gillard for her gender or politics, she does hold the office of Prime Minister and that alone should engender some basic respect.
Jones began his recent interview with Gillard by ranting about her late arrival. When she apologised and explained she was a bit busy, he snapped “we’re all busy” and continued to talk over the top of her and even call her Ju-liar. His program sets the tone for the rest of the day on 2GB and all the wannabe Alan Jones copy his manners, or lack of them, and overbearing style.
Mark Day, The Australian’s media writer, calls it “redneck radio”; others have named it “shock-jock shit-stirring” or “bogan broadcasting”. I call it “convict radio.”
The opposing commercial talk station, 2UE, attempted a more civilised approach with presenters such as Mike Carleton and Peter Fitzsimons, but in a desperate grab for ratings, it has reverted to stealing some of 2GB’s Alan Jones clones. So for 24 hours every day, from both stations, listeners are assaulted by a barrage of incessant and ridiculing attacks on Julia Gillard and the Government in the most uncouth language, tone and style. Their listeners are the elderly (who are easily scared and made anxious), the so-called battlers (those for whom earning enough money is always a struggle), the disaffected (those who feel fate has dealt them a bad hand) and the mentally fragile (who don’t need much to tip them over the edge).
The daily tabloids simply feed off what is said on convict radio by appealing to the same section of the population.
These are the same people Tony Abbott is calling on to attend a “people’s revolt” in Canberra on March 23. Once you lose basic manners and respect for the Office of Prime Minister, whoever the incumbent, you get the kind of dangerous vitriol that is being written on the Facebook page that has been organised for “The Revolt Against the Carbon Tax”. Comments such as: “We have got to get rid of the Godless mistress of deceit.”
Even extremists from the Tea Party in the United States are being attracted to the site and are contributing sentiments such as: “Sorry to see we are not the only nation plagued with vermin like Obama.” In the case of Julia Gillard, most of the toxic remarks are just poorly disguised sexism, just as with Obama they are based on racism.
And this is my point. Once you allow the airwaves to be polluted by a lack of manners and a total disrespect from highly paid, high-rating presenters, you unleash the worst of convict culture. Once rampant sexism and racism is out of the bag, it is very hard to put them back in. Extremists on both the Right and the Left will proceed to light the fires of violence. No wonder Tony Windsor is receiving death threats.
Sophie Mirabella, a Federal MP from Victoria, added her own fuel to the fires of disrespect and uncouth behaviour when she compared Julia Gillard to the dictator and tyrant Gaddafi, by claiming they were both delusional. Instead of insisting she apologise, Tony Abbott dismissed her comments as “colourful”, thus allowing the convict culture to grow. His other way of dismissing publicly disrespectful remarks from members of his party is to say they are merely part of a “robust” debate.
Perhaps Christopher Pearson, a long-time resident and supporter of Adelaide and one of Abbott’s chief cheerleaders, should instruct him in the wisdom and necessity of acquiring and practising Adelaide manners.
As William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester and founder of New College in Oxford, a university which Mr Abbott once attended, wrote: “Manners maketh man.”
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